Fore! Play (8 page)

Not to mention cleats, which may seem like a small thing, but are not. (For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of
a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the battle was lost, etc.)

“Cleats can be critical,” proclaims the Eagle Grip soft cleats salesman, and the Softspikes representative agrees: “Our Black
Widow model is the new standard, offering unparalleled traction, anti-clogging, and is available in four installation systems:
small thread, large thread, the new Champ-Q-Lok, fast twist. They can make an enormous difference.”

Proper Cleats: -1 stroke (we think “enormous” is hyperbolic)

“You know your problem?” shouts the barker, literally grabbing us as we walk by. “You don’t have dry hands! It’s ruining your
game!”

Lucky for me, he has Dry Hands lotion, “the ultimate gripping solution!,” which he is now frantically squirting on my palms
even though I didn’t ask him to. “It actually repels water and perspiration! Hit those hands with some water!” he blurts at
his assistant, who immediately pours a glass of water on my palms—and the water rolls right off!

I have very dry, very milky-colored hands for the rest of the day.

Dry Hands: -2 strokes, he says: “At least!”

Tees! Do you mean to tell me it actually matters what kind of
tees
I use?

“Absolutely!” barks the tee man. “Our tees employ advanced technological advances.”

Okay, then. His Perfect-Tee, for example, has not one prong but two! How’s
that
for progress? It has two prongs for greater distance, “more confidence,” consistent ball height, and adjustable ball trajectory.

I tell him that I already have adjustable ball trajectory. Mine adjusts, automatically, without any input from me, from wormburner
to the bottle rocket trajectory. But before you go getting cynical on me, just listen to this Perfect-Tee endorsement from
James C. White of Birmingham, Alabama: “I had no trouble with my balls falling off in high winds.” Nobody wants that.

Direct-A-Tee is a bent, 45 degree angle tee, for—guess what? More distance and accuracy through “scientific development.”
And! It is the golf tee of the future. Another tee boasts its “biodegradability,” which means it’s wood. Also, “it goes in
the ground easier”—and you know how tired you get pushing those damned tees in the ground all day, especially when you use
tees for almost every shot (except putting), like I do.

Also, there’s a “South African revolutionary” tee. We didn’t even know South African revolutionaries were golfers. We figured
it was the white guys. With this one, you set the ball on toothbrush bristles, the Brush-T. “Wood and plastic,” said a rather
unrevolutionary-looking sales rep, “are over.”

“How many strokes will it take off my game?”

“On average? Three or more.”

Techno Tees: -3 strokes

Perhaps the greatest advance at the show, although Jody may beg to differ, is embodied in two attractive young women advancing
toward us, passing out literature for their services. No one brushes aside
their
brochures and
everybody
reads them, carefully.

They’re
the product, offered by Caddy Girls USA, a firm (very) providing comely, young—but legal—women in short skirts to caddie
for you, the golfer. The picture on the brochure shows just such a babe going over a (golf) scorecard with a client as they
sit together, very snugly, in a cart. The brochure reads: “Need a caddy? Have more fun. From the bag drop until the final
putt on the 18th green Caddy Girls will caddy, encourage, and entertain the entire round. Caddy Girls offers a team of attractive,
knowledgeable, and entertaining girls that will make any golf outing a memorable event.”

It stays away from terms like “scoring” and “strokes,” but “encourage,” “entertain,” “bag drop”—it all sounds beneficial to
my game.

Caddy Girls: +5 strokes

Carts are, of course, critical. I actually own my own. It came with a house we bought, thrown in by the sellers for two hundred
bucks. Right away it needed $300 worth of batteries, a new tire, and several other repairs. It has yet to be on a golf course.
My nieces and nephews love it, driving it ceaselessly around and around the yard, killing the grass and nearly themselves,
while screaming at each other all day over whose turn it is to drive. The guys at the local auto repair shop love my golf
cart, which is kind of an annuity for them—a golden goose that just keeps on giving. The shop has done about $1,000 in repairs
to it over the last three years. The kids drove it into the bushes and hung it up on a tree stump, destroying the steering.
They ruined the ignition system. They crashed it into and through our fence. Finally, they hit the house itself, causing $800
in damage. One time, our nieces and nephews didn’t break it—my daughter’s teenaged friends did. They took it out for a spin
(possibly after a few beers) on some rural roads, a venture on which they were spotted (despite having camouflaged it with
weeds and tree branches) driving it into the local airport and onto a ferry boat. They returned pushing the broken cart, which
bore a cargo of stolen lawn ornaments. You wouldn’t think there’d be all that many things that could go wrong with a simple
golf cart, but there are, especially when it’s used as an all-terrain vehicle.

There are fancy carts at the show costing almost as much as cars. Some look like street hot rods—’35 Chevies and ‘34 Fords—outfitted
with coolers under the hoods, phone jacks, brake lights, horns, cigarette lighters, and turn signals. There are classy Duesenberg
estate golf carts, too.

And you know those pull carts? For about $1,100 you don’t have to pull them. You push buttons on a remote control and the
TS-1 Lectronic Kaddy runs all over the course, terrifying other golfers. “You’ll want the ‘Hill Tamer’ feature,” says the
salesman. Hell yes. Got to have Hill Tamer. And “worm gear drive”! Sure. The company motto is “Break par, not your back.”

If you don’t want to spend that kind of dough, there’s the Cart Wizard, which Velcros the pull cart to the back of your belt
and you pull it like a horse pulling a cart.

“You can’t underestimate the fatigue factor in golf,” says the salesman. “It could cost you five strokes, minimum.”

Golf Cart: -5 strokes (although the pros walk, and Warning: Golf carts with built-in beer coolers may double your score on
the back 9)

I play bare-handed and that is wrong. Golf gloves make all the difference. For one thing you look cooler, and you have a better
grip (especially when you or your beer can is sweating). “Steve” says he wears his when he’s masturbating. That way he doesn’t
give himself any sexually transmittable diseases.

If you give a tinker’s damn about our rain forests you’ll buy possum-skin gloves. Personally, it makes
my
skin crawl to think of touching that of a possum, but it turns out the little bastards are destroying New Zealand’s rain
forests! Read the brochure for the Gripper natural possum-skin gloves: “Brought to New Zealand in 1837, the possum flourished
in the absence of natural predators and now poses a serious environmental threat to New Zealand’s native rain forest, consuming
21,000 tons of foliage per day!!! By attempting to keep the possum population in check, the Gripper is helping to preserve
and maintain New Zealand’s delicate balance of nature.”

Kill ‘Em and Wear ‘Em. Now!

I don’t know if the kangaroo is destroying Australia’s rain forests or not, or if Australia even has any rain forests, but
you can help by buying K’Rooz kangaroo leather golf gloves, which are thinner yet last four times longer than cabretta leather,
according to a usually reliable source, the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia. “You’ll feel more confidence and have
lower scores,” they say.

There are fleece-lined gloves for nuts who play in cold weather, gloves with magnets and copper inserts, special cart driving
gloves, and the Crazy Q glove, which has weights in it and may actually allow you to cheat undetected. Like illegally weighted
bats in baseball, these weighted gloves are said to increase impact power by 5 to 10 percent, causing ten to twenty yards
of extra distance.

Possum, Kangaroo, or Cheating Gloves: -3 strokes